Nothing to See Here

This thing called the Internet

2009-09-09T19:50:00.004-05:00

See the little graphic on the bottom of the page that says, SiteMeter? Anybody can click on it. It takes you to a site that tracks visitation stats for this blog. They track several stats, like which URLs you came from (called a referrer), which pages folks visit the most (my post on image grabs from Garmin's is still the top reason folks come here) and where folks go from here. SiteMeter is a free service. Anybody can use it. Even your friend can use it to spy on other folks. Really.

This link shows page recent visits by referral.

Not sure if it matters to any of you, but there's no magic going on. I hope you realize that you're being watched by the web. Not just by your ISP, who knows every site you visit, but also by the very sites your visit. You should assume that all of them know this sort of stuff. If you're particularly paranoid, stop surfing the web now.

Here endeth the lesson.

Garmin Colorado and the Geocaching.com Waypoint License Agreement, Part II

2009-01-01T10:41:00.004-06:00

Having read the Groundspeak Waypoint license agreement again, it suddenly occurred to me that some Garmin owners might be in trouble. Owners of the Garmin Colorado might have bought the unit for the wireless sharing feature:

Share Wirelessly

With Colorado 300 you can share your waypoints, tracks, routes and geocaches wirelessly with other Colorado users. Now you can send your favorite hike to your buddy to enjoy or the location of a cache to find. Sharing data is easy. Just select “send” to transfer your information to other Colorado units.

Emphasis mine. The license agreement says that sharing of downloaded waypoints is not permitted. I wrote Groundspeak pointing out this issue and got a quick clarification:

Hi Jim,

Thanks for asking. Sharing of individual cache data using the Garmin Colorado features is authorized by Groundspeak, although not specifically addressed in the Waypoint License. Please feel free to contact me with any additional questions.

Sincerely,
Bryan Roth
Groundspeak Inc.
bryan@groundspeak.com
P 206.302.7721 x103
F 206.374.8161
Groundspeak - The Language of Location

As my attorney wife says, "Get it in writing." I don't know if Bryan is an officer of Groundspeak, so I don' know if his response is legally binding. I will be taking him up on his offer and asking about the Groundspeak TOS and waypoint license agreement language.

User-Generated Content Licensing

2008-12-29T17:12:00.003-06:00

Groundspeak, Inc., the company behind geocaching.com, a popular geocaching website, has added a click-thru license agreement that a paying user of their site must agree to before accessing the "pocket query" feature of the website.

IMPORTANT--READ CAREFULLY BEFORE DOWNLOADING THE ONLINE DATA

GROUNDSPEAK, INC. D/B/A GEOCACHING.COM (GROUNDSPEAK), IS WILLING TO LICENSE THE REQUESTED DATA TO YOU ONLY UPON THE CONDITION THAT YOU ACCEPT THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS CONTAINED IN THIS LICENSE AGREEMENT. PLEASE READ THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS CAREFULLY BEFORE CLICKING THE ‘I ACCEPT’ BUTTON AND THEREAFTER DOWNLOADING THE ONLINE DATA. BY DOWNLOADING THE ONLINE DATA, YOU ARE INDICATING YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THE GROUNDSPEAK DATA LICENSE AGREEMENT. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS AS STATED, THEN GROUNDSPEAK IS UNWILLING TO LICENSE THE DATA TO YOU.

GROUNDSPEAK DATA LICENSE AGREEMENT

This is a license agreement, and not an agreement for sale, between the end user (Licensee) and GROUNDSPEAK, Inc. (GROUNDSPEAK), a Washington corporation, with its principal place of business at 2127 5th Avenue, Seattle, WA, 98121, USA. This GROUNDSPEAK Data License Agreement (Agreement) gives Licensee certain limited rights to use the Data and Related Materials. All rights not specifically granted in this Agreement are reserved to GROUNDSPEAK.

Reservation of Ownership and Grant of License: GROUNDSPEAK and its licensor(s) retain exclusive ownership of the copy of the Data and Related Materials licensed under this Agreement and, hereby, grant to Licensee a personal, nonexclusive, nontransferable license to use the Data and Related Materials based on the terms and conditions of this Agreement. Licensee agrees to use reasonable effort to protect the Data and Related Materials from unauthorized use, reproduction, distribution, or publication.

Proprietary Rights and Copyright: Licensee acknowledges that the Data and Related Materials contain proprietary and confidential property of GROUNDSPEAK and its licensor(s). The Data and Related Materials are owned by GROUNDSPEAK and its licensor(s) and are protected by United States copyright laws and applicable international copyright treaties and/or conventions.

Permitted Uses:
• Licensee may install the Data or portions of the Data onto a global positioning system unit ["GPS"] for Licensee's own internal use.
• Licensee may make only one (1) copy of the original Data for archival purposes unless the right to make additional copies is granted to Licensee in writing by GROUNDSPEAK.
• Licensee may modify the Data and merge other data sets with the Data for Licensee's own internal use. The portions of the Data merged with other data sets will continue to be subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement.
• Licensee may use, copy, alter, modify, merge, reproduce, and/or create derivative works of the on-line textual content [including the about geocaching content, links content and cache hiding tutorial] for Licensee's own internal use. The portions of the on-line documentation merged with other software, data, hard copy, and/or digital materials shall continue to be subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement and shall provide the following copyright attribution notice acknowledging GROUNDSPEAK's proprietary rights in the on-line documentation: "Portions of this document include intellectual property of GROUNDSPEAK and are used herein by permission. Copyright © 2006 GROUNDSPEAK, Inc. All Rights Reserved."
Uses Not Permitted:
• Licensee shall not sell, rent, lease, sublicense, lend, assign, time-share, or transfer, in whole or in part, or provide access to the Data, Related Materials, any updates, or Licensee's rights under this Agreement to any third party whatsoever.
• Licensee shall not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the GROUNDSPEAK-compatible data format(s) in an attempt to duplicate the proprietary and copyright-protected GROUNDSPEAK data model(s) and/or export format(s).
• Licensee shall not remarket, resell, and/or redistribute the Data or any derived portion(s) of the Data in its digital form to any third party whatsoever.
• Licensee shall not remove or obscure any GROUNDSPEAK and/or licensor(s) copyright, proprietary, or trademark notices.
Redistribution Rights for Derived Digital Data Sets: At GROUNDSPEAK's sole option, GROUNDSPEAK may grant a separate sublicense agreement, on a royalty fee basis, with Licensees who wish to obtain redistribution rights for derived or other value-added digital data sets in GROUNDSPEAK-compatible data format(s). Please address your written proposals to Attn.: GROUNDSPEAK Data Manager, GROUNDSPEAK, Inc., 2127 5th Avenue, Seattle, WA, 98121 USA.

Term: The license granted by this Agreement shall commence upon Licensee's receipt of the Data and Related Materials and shall continue until such time that (1) Licensee elects to discontinue use of the Data and Related Materials and terminates the Agreement or (2) GROUNDSPEAK terminates for Licensee's material breach of this Agreement. Upon termination of this Agreement in either instance, Licensee shall then return to GROUNDSPEAK the Data and Related Materials. The parties hereby agree that all provisions that operate to protect the rights of GROUNDSPEAK and its licensor(s) shall remain in force should breach occur.

No Warranty: The Data are not warranted and Licensee expressly acknowledges that the Data contain some nonconformities, defects, or errors. GROUNDSPEAK does not warrant that the Data will meet Licensee's needs or expectations, that the use of the Data will be uninterrupted, or that all nonconformities, defects, or errors can or will be corrected. GROUNDSPEAK is not inviting reliance on these data, and Licensee should always verify actual data.

THE DATA AND RELATED MATERIALS CONTAINED THEREIN ARE PROVIDED "AS IS," WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Exclusive Remedy and Limitation of Liability: The GROUNDSPEAK and/or licensor(s) entire liability and Licensee's exclusive remedy shall be to terminate the Agreement upon Licensee returning the Data and Related Materials to GROUNDSPEAK with a copy of Licensee's invoice/receipt and GROUNDSPEAK returning any license fees paid to Licensee.

IN NO EVENT SHALL GROUNDSPEAK AND/OR ITS LICENSOR(S) BE LIABLE FOR COSTS OF PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES, LOST PROFITS, LOST SALES OR BUSINESS EXPENDITURES, INVESTMENTS, OR COMMITMENTS IN CONNECTION WITH ANY BUSINESS, LOSS OF ANY GOODWILL, OR FOR ANY INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THIS AGREEMENT OR USE OF THE DATA AND RELATED MATERIALS, HOWEVER CAUSED, ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, AND WHETHER OR NOT GROUNDSPEAK AND/OR ITS LICENSOR(S) HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. THESE LIMITATIONS SHALL APPLY NOTWITHSTANDING ANY FAILURE OF ESSENTIAL PURPOSE OF ANY EXCLUSIVE REMEDY.

No Implied Waivers: No failure or delay by GROUNDSPEAK and/or its licensor(s) in enforcing any right or remedy under this Agreement shall be construed as a waiver of any future or other exercise of such right or remedy by GROUNDSPEAK and/or its licensor(s).

Export Regulation: Licensee acknowledges that this Agreement and the performance thereof are subject to compliance with any and all applicable United States laws, regulations, or orders relating to the export of data thereto. Licensee agrees to comply with all laws, regulations, and orders of the United States in regard to any export of such Technical Data. Licensee agrees not to disclose or re-export any Technical Data received under this Agreement in or to any countries for which the United States Government requires an export license or other supporting documentation at the time of export or transfer, unless Licensee has obtained prior written authorization from GROUNDSPEAK and the U.S. Office of Export Control.

Severability: If any provision(s) of this Agreement shall be held to be invalid, illegal, or unenforceable by a court or other tribunal of competent jurisdiction, the validity, legality, and enforceability of the remaining provisions shall not in any way be affected or impaired thereby.

Governing Law: This Agreement, entered into in King County shall be construed and enforced in accordance with and be governed by the laws of the United States of America and the State of Washington without reference to conflict of laws principles. The parties hereby consent to the personal jurisdiction of the courts of this County and waive their rights to change venue.

Entire Agreement: The parties agree that this constitutes the sole and entire agreement of the parties as to the matter set forth herein and supersedes any previous agreements, understandings, and arrangements between the parties relating hereto.

What I find most interesting about this whole agreement is that the waypoint data is user-submitted content. In fact, the Geocaching.com Site Terms of Use Agreement states under
3. License to Use Site; Restrictions

The Site and all content available on the Site are protected by applicable intellectual property laws, and are for personal and noncommercial use. All rights not expressly granted in this Agreement are reserved by Groundspeak or by the respective owners of the intellectual property rights. All materials available on or through the Site, other than Third Party Submissions (collectively, the "Site Materials") are the property of Groundspeak or of its licensors and are protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. Groundspeak reserves the right to impose additional terms and conditions upon Your use and viewing of particular Site Materials, and any such terms and conditions may be posted on the Site in connection with those Site Materials. You may not reproduce or retransmit the Site Materials, in whole or in part, in any manner, without the prior written consent of the owner of such materials, except as follows: You may make a single copy of the Site Materials solely for Your personal, noncommercial use, but such copying must be consistent with any applicable additional terms and conditions and You must preserve any copyright, trademark, or other notices contained in or associated with such Site Materials. You may not distribute such copies to others, whether or not in electronic form and whether or not for a charge or other consideration, without prior written consent of the owner of such materials. If you have any questions, contact us at contact@groundspeak.com.

and, under section

6. License to Use Submissions:

All comments, articles, tutorials, screenshots, pictures, graphics, tools, downloads, and all other materials submitted to Groundspeak in connection with the Site or available through the Site (collectively, "Submissions") remain the property and copyright of the original author. If You submit Submissions to Groundspeak, You must adhere to any applicable submission guidelines that may be posted from time to time on the Site. By submitting any Submission to Groundspeak, You grant Groundspeak a worldwide, non-exclusive, transferable, perpetual, irrevocable, fully-paid royalty-free license and right to use, reproduce, distribute, import, broadcast, transmit, modify and create derivative works of, license, offer to sell, and sell, rent, lease or lend copies of, publicly display and publicly perform that Submission for any purpose and without restriction or obligation to You

Color me confused. The information I submit to the site remains my property, but in using a feature of their site, the exported data becomes their property? How's that again? (emphasis in preceding paragraphs mine).

Time to Build a Moat? No.

2008-11-01T09:22:00.004-05:00

On Thursday morning I got a call from my wife telling me that our house alarm had gone off and that she was en route to see what had happened. I left the office and showed up a short while later where I met her and 3 police officers, one of whom was already dusting for prints. From what we can reconstruct, it looks like would-be burglar(s)

attempted to twist the lock off of my garage-side gate, then
walked around to the other side of the house and popped the electric meter off, shutting off the electricity, then
climbed our 8' privacy fence,
looked around and decided the best method of break-in would be to break out a pane in the living room window,
picked up a large metal shepherd's hook we use for hanging plants and broke the window pane, reached in, opened the window hasp and opened the window, and then
fled the scene in confusion as the alarm sounded.

A couple of years ago we decided to add a cell phone-based backup to our alarm system, owing to reports that burglars were shutting house electric services to prevent alarms from sounding. Needless to say, our decision just paid for itself. In the for-what-its-worth category, Ellendale Electric installed and monitors our alarm service.

Over the last few years the Memphis Police department has taken a few knocks, but I'll say this: they have always responded quickly whenever I've called, and they have always been courteous and professional. The fact that my wife works with many of them on a daily basis might have something to do with it, but I don't think you learn to be good at your job in 5 minutes, so I'm inclined to believe that every one of the local guys in blue that I've dealt with are simply good officers, and that I'm certainly getting my tax dollars worth.

A short while after the officers finished most of their work, a revenue protection officer from MLG&W showed up to investigate the meter. He restored service and placed a heavy duty security collar around the meter, showing me how substantially stronger the newer style collars are than the old models. He also ordered a replacement meter just in case our old one was damaged by the burglar.

A couple of hours later a glazier came by from Joyner Glass to replace the broken windowpane.

All in all our experience has been about as good as you can expect. Since then I've been thinking about two questions:

Why did we get broken into?, and
What can we do to try to prevent being broken into?

As for the first, the MLG&W RP officer gave me as good an explanation as any when he said, "Your house looks like it has stuff." While we are working on changing that (see last post), I don't think the burglars intended to steal our books - even my signed, uncorrected proof of Milosz' The Unattainable Earth isn't that valuable and would be difficult to sell/pawn. I imagine they were intending to take our electronics and that they would have been sadly disappointed to learn that we do not have a giant flat-screen TV in our living room, nor do we have game consoles, or even a surround-sound stereo system of recent vintage. We have an 'L' grand piano - not exactly pawnable. We have a few of computers; it might be funny to see them react to Linux on my desktop, and even funnier to see them fire up my old Nec APC IV, though pound-for-pound it simple wouldn't be worth the hernia of getting it down the stairs.

I've decided upon 3 courses of action to try to prevent a future re-occurrence. First, I'm contacting my alarm company to get some stickers and signs, with the intention of making sure that potential burglars know the house is alarmed. Obviously this time that didn't prevent an effort, but this time we were dealing with a repeat-offenders - in effect, professional thieves - and I want to persuade lesser theives to move along. Second, I'm posting flyers in my neighbors' door-handles letting them know what happened and to be on the lookout for anything suspicious in our neighborhood. Third, I'm talking to the folks at work: you'd be amazed at the highly inventive suggestions you get from a bunch of enigineers who are handed a problem. Cameras? Easy. Wireless cameras? Easy. Wireless cameras that automatically email me alerts when they sense motion? Better. Machine-gun turrets that automatically shoot intruders? Okay, I probably won't go for the last one.

The other question I've been asking myself is why someone wanted to steal in the first place. I've never viewed thieves as particularly stupid, but I have always assumed they are lazy. Implicit in that reasoning, I suppose, is that thieves have a choice: they could be law-abiding citizens who work, or they could be lazy good-for-nothings who would rather steal. Our last would-be burglar turned out to be a crack addict who was stealing to support his drug habit; the blood he left at the scene matched a DNA sample taken when he was processed for a later crime, and that additional charge increased his jail time. All of that to say: I wonder what his actual choices were regarding stealing and working, really. Now at this point this may be starting to sound like an apologia for thieves, but that's not my intent. I do hope I'm never in a situation where stealing starts to look like an attractive alternative to being a responsible, productive citizen, though. Thieves are still lazy and irresponsible in my book, but they may be desperate, too. Getting arrested is a kind of treatment, because it takes them out of that immediate situation of desperation. It may not be preferable to them, but that's not really what's important. What is important is that they see and live an immediate consequence of their decisions, so they can re-evaluate how they can live.

Some folks have asked me when I'm going to sell my house and move. I'm not, certainly not yet. My wife deals with criminals of all kinds every day, so I have a fair appreciation, probably a better understanding than 95% of you, as to the level and type of crime in this city. [ I'll add that it is the rare, rare exception when the local media accurately quotes my wife regarding criminal cases, and that their coverage of cases she is involved in seems to be more ratings-driven than anything else. ] Like the thieves, we have made a decision and that decision is based on us having more reasons to stay than leave.

On the keeping of books

2008-10-26T17:11:00.005-05:00

My wife and I recently had to purchase a new furnace for the house. This meant getting in the attic, which ordinarily wouldn't be a problem since we have walk-in access to it, save for one thing: my wife and I are packrats. My wife reminds me from time to time that it is a good thing that we are both packrats, contrary to what playwrights might tell you. All this to say that our attic needed a little organizing before the HVAC folks could safely move about the cabin. It wasn't a lot of fun, not only because of all the lifting and moving of boxes. I think the fundamental problem for any packrat is simply getting past the paralysis of knowing what to throw away. Call it "letting go" if it makes you feel better, but the problem remains.

The good news is that, having moved past the attic (not that we're done with it, but baby steps, baby steps), we're now actually considering other parts of the house, including our biggest accumulation: books. A couple of weeks ago I donated seven boxes of books to the library. (They accept donations at the main branch; I don't know about other branches.) Now I know what you're saying: seven boxes? big deal! Here's the deal: these were just the boxes in my garage, where they have been stored since we moved into the house... in 1999. Since then we've donated another 8 or so boxes, and I already have another 3 -5 boxes lined up. You're probably saying, "Ummm, you're donating to the library..... why not borrow from the library, too, and save yourself the trouble?" Well, first things first, as we still have the equivalent of 8 bookcases left to go. It's still a troublesome task. I look at a book and ask myself, "Am I ever going to read this book again?" I think my biggest problem is simply that I lie to myself and say, "Sure, I'll read it again." Another problem, though, is that, at least with respect to books, I am sentimental. When I look at a book, I don't just see the text; I usually remember when I bought it, where, and why. I remember reading it. You would think something so special would invoke a desire to share it with the world, but til now it's been harder than I thought it would be.

Right now I don't have a goal in mind, so I don't know when I'll be finished. Maybe I'll be done when I just can't get rid of any of the books I have left. I already know I have a few I'll keep, certainly more for the memories they invoke than the certainty that I will read them again:

a couple of books inscribed by friends,
a set of Tom Apostol's Calculus Volumes signed by Paul Erdos,
a book autographed by an author friend,
A signed uncorrected proof of Unattainable Earth by Czeslaw Milosz, and an autographed copy of his The Captive Mind.

For now, back to the shelves.

2008-07-02T08:14:00.001-05:00

Wondering why IE is now crashing whenever I visit the Google Calendar webpage.

2008-06-06T09:18:00.001-05:00

Mic check..... one TWO.... one TWO.... CHECK CHECK.

Bad Pilgrims

2008-05-25T21:21:00.007-05:00

Rebekah Scott writes wonderful stories about living on the Camino Frances and the joys of rustic home ownership in Spain. (She's on my 'always' read list.) She recently wrote a post titled American Idiot that prompted me to comment on her blog, but rather than waste too much of her space I figured I use more of my own.
(And, no, I have no idea whether she's a big Green Day fan or not.)

Her post is about her encounter with an 'ugly American'. Don't know what that means?

I met a particularly nasty character today in Sahagún, holding forth at the Bar Deportivo before an audience of four or five other pilgrims, apparently English-speakers. This guy speaks no other language, he said: "and why should I have to?" He griped about the French, Germans, Spaniards, and other "foreigners" he´s encountering on his hike, and wondered why they don´t just pave the entire camino trail. And then he started into politics...

Now, Rebekah goes on to describe more boorish behavior, mainly of a political bent, but that's not what I want to talk about here, so if you're interested, read her post. I'll wait.

What her post did for me is to remind me of two events that occurred when my wife and I walked our little bit of the Camino Frances in 2004, and our own encounters with 'ugly pilgrims'. As I mentioned in my comment on her site, my wife and I encountered only one other American (Jim, who worked for the CDC in Atlanta) our entire trip. Maybe that's a blessing - at the time I was all for some experience that would push my wife and I into alien, uncomfortable territory. [ Careful what you wish for. ]

The first encounter was this: we had stopped for the day in Ventas de Naron,
where we met Manuel and Reme, good friends we would walk with for the rest of our journey. When the albergue opened, we climbed up the stairs and claimed a couple of the 22 beds and walked next door for a meal. Upon our returned we noticed that most if not all of the beds appeared taken.
So there we were, sitting on our beds, unpacking, chatting, and tending to the wounds of the day when we heard a tremendous commotion downstairs, so much so that Manuel and I decided it was worth checking the situation out. [ I suppose guys are guys anywhere and anytime. ] That was when first saw the pilgrim who became known to all of us as 'the angry German woman.'

Why was she angry? Well, she wanted a bed. Actually, she wanted two beds, one for herself and one for her husband. Her husband who was sick. Her husband, who would soon be arriving in a taxi.

Now, I can only tell you my opinion on these matters, so I'll tell you this: the Camino is not a hike, it is a Pilgrimage. If you want to know the difference, that's a whole 'nother conversation and far better explained by others, but certainly intent has a lot to do with it. And albergues do not exist for hikers or tourists; they exist for pilgrims. What's a pilgrim? Well, read some Cousineau and get back to me when you have an answer. In the meantime, there's a few specifics that are observed on the Camino, and one of the big no-no's is that you arrive at an albergue under your own power - walking, running, even riding a bike (though walkers might be given first dibs). Horseback? Maybe. Taxi.... in a word, NO.

"But," I hear you say, "the husband was sick." Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. I saw people dropped off by taxi on the outskirts of town so that they could stroll in and claim a cheap room. So what's the big deal? Nothing, really, except for a place to stay for the night for someone else who might have been walking all day. Was the German woman telling the truth? I honestly don't know. I do know she seemed to protest a bit too much, and she sure was awfully loud about it. I have heard it said that hospitalieros develop a strong intuition about genuine pilgrims vs. tourist pretenders, and maybe the German woman was setting off all sorts of mental alarms. When the husband arrived he didn't look that sick, but I'm no doctor. And maybe yelling is an obnoxious way of getting what you want from people, but maybe yelling is a disparate way of getting something you badly need, too.

Oh, in case you're wondering: the German woman and her husband ended up staying. They complained loudly the whole time.

At this point you may be asking: Is this an ugly German story? No, her nationality isn't my point.

My second story: a day or two later my wife and I stopped, mid-morning, at a sort of cafe on the road. We grabbed a couple of coffees and sat at an outside table and watched the pilgrim traffic walk by, when I spied a fellow walk around the bend with a Purdue tee shirt on. Maybe it was the appearance of something so incongruously familiar, but I couldn't help but yell out, "Hey Purdue!" to the man, who looked at me strangely, then looked down at his shirt, smiled, and waved. And so he stopped, too, grabbed a coffee, came outside and sat next to me. We talked for a moment, quickly establishing that the tee-shirt was the gift of a son or daughter-in-law, that he was a Spaniard and I an American, and that I was James and he was Jamie, so, as he said, "We are the same." Then another man, also a Spaniard sat down next to Jamie, we exchanged our 'Buenos dias', and then they struck up a conversation.

I do not know Spanish. Some might argue that I do not know English, either, but I certainly know very little Spanish. That said, I'm no dummy and 4+ solid years of Latin help me find my way through all sorts of things. So I eavesdropped very intently, and I caught a few things in their words: English. American. Something about not speaking Spanish.

I quickly became upset: here was a fellow I'd just met and befriended and now he was trashing ignorant Americans right next to me! I looked at my wife, suggested we finish our coffees and shove off, and we did so in quick order. But Jamie did the same and so there we were, walking beside this man who was complaining about us moments before. And then something wonderful happened: Jamie made a wrong turn. Or, I should say, he didn't make the right turn. He strode on ahead into what appeared to be a farmer's field, whereas I looked to my right, caught glimpse of splash of yellow paint, and stopped. I will admit that I hesitated, but I called out to Jamie and said, "Jamie.... the road is here." I had to repeat myself, but he came back, looked up, laughed, and said, "You're right! Thanks!" And so we started walking side-by-side again, and since I couldn't take it any more, I asked him, "Jamie.... I have to ask you a question.... back up the road, you talked to the man next to you, and it sounded to me as though you were complaining about Americans, and so I have to ask what you were talking about." And he told me, "No, that's not what we said. What we said was how nice it was to have an American try to say a little Spanish, because the British come over here and live and many of them do not speak any Spanish, and they all live together and try to stay the same, and after twenty years all they know how to do is order a beer."

Now, this story isn't about how this made me feel better, though it did, nor is it about ugly British pilgrims or ex-pats, either.

About once a month my wife and I talk about what it means to be a pilgrim. While we don't agree on several things, we do agree about intention being very important, perhaps the most important thing. "The journey is more important than the destination" may be a worn-out cliche, but for me the most profound moments of the road were in the most mundane places. The main thing the conversation with my wife continues to reinforce is that notion that everyone's pilgrimage is intensely personal and unique. I wish that everyone had the wonderful experience I did. I wish that everyone encountered the generous, kind, and wise pilgrims I did. The truth of the matter is that 100,000+ pilgrims walk the road, all for their own reasons, some joyfully but some painfully, too. This is the lesson I learned on the road: to get past my desire for other pilgrims to think and believe and act the way I do and instead to try to understand why it is that they are the way they are, especially when I see something I don't like. There is always a story, and many times it isn't the one I think it is.

So, Ugly Americans/Germans/French/British/whatever? Heck yes. Ugly because they are continually obnoxious? Sure. Ugly because they are scared and far from home? That, too. Lonely, depressed, and the thousand other reasons people choose to walk hundreds of miles, especially if they've crossed an ocean first? Yes. For some folks, the right moment may not have arrived yet. For some it may never come. I continue to remain hopeful.

Geogames

2008-05-16T17:55:00.003-05:00

Coin gift from Jeremy Irish
Originally uploaded by jbgreer

Many local readers of this blog know that I'm a geocacher, albeit a methodical (read: slow) one. Still, I try to pick up a few caches when I can, so when I registered for the recent Where 2.0 conference in Burlingame, CA, I setup a few pocket queries on the Geocaching.com site around the areas of my visit. Five days away from home, and I only managed 4 finds: one in downtown Sonoma and a few near the hotel. That said, I was pleased to see that Jeremy Irish, head of Groundspeak, the folks behind the Geocaching.com (and Waymarking.com, and Wherigo.com) sites was speaking at the conference.

Since some of you may ask: no, Jeremy didn't speak about geocaching per se, though he did chide the crowd of geofolk who don't cache ("If you're not a geocacher..... SHAME ON YOU.") Instead, he spoke about the lessons that Groundspeak has learned in working with the geocaching community, especially as applied to other GPS and geospatial games. I thought it particularly telling that he cautioned against games that relied on a very accurate sense of location and that he described both positive and negative aspects of incenting players into the mania that plagues many players.

After his talk, I stopped by and identified myself as a geocacher and thanked him for his talk. I'd brought along a couple of old geocoins, intending to place them in a nearly travel bug motel. Instead, I offered him one of my coins as a gift. Imagine my surprise when he said, "Oh.... wait a minute", fumbled into his bag, and produced a similar gift of his own: a "Groundspeak Lackeys: 2007" coin that they had minted for employees, with iconic caricatures of all the staff.

Several of the other attendees and presenters were focused on geogames. Some were interested in them as educational devices, while others seemed to be promoting them as fun (and hopefully lucrative) ways of enjoying space. Either way, I think the explosion in location-aware devices will continue to stoke the creative fires of many. Here's hoping for their continued success.

The Five Questions

2008-05-03T17:42:00.002-05:00

I once read that the easiest way to make money on the internet was to implement all of the standard *ix services like mail, telnet, ftp, finger, and wall, but to make them run in a browser. We've pretty much done that. Here's another take. In grade school I recall being taught that it was important to answer five questions in a piece of writing: Who, What, When, Where, and How.

The Who question is being answered by all of the social networking services, though they have yet to be truly unified.

The What question is being answered by search.

The When question is being answered by blogging and public messaging.

The Where question is being answered by online mapping services.

The How question is being answered by blogs and DIY communities.

So the question is: is there a better way to answer any of these questions?

Losing a little faith in humanity

2008-04-19T16:59:00.003-05:00

Friday was not a good day.

On Friday my wife and I switched vehicles. She took my truck so that she could drop it off at a repair shop near her workplace; my truck was badly in need of a near pair of front tires. [ That's what putting off buying a new vehicle for 2 years will get you.... ] In turn I drove her vehicle to my workplace. She got the better end of the deal.

My commute route varies according to

day of the week,
time of day,
direction of travel,
sound, and
which intersections/streets the city chooses to render completely useless for extended periods of time.

The Monday drive home means taking the 385 Pkwy - I-240 W - I-240N and then home. Other days driving home means taking the Ridgeway exit off 385 and driving through town. Driving to the office might mean taking Walnut Grove to White Station to Poplar to the loop, or Sam Cooper to the loop. The sound of a train horn in the morning definitely means the latter. The construction at Perkins and Walnut Grove means avoiding it entirely.

So, this past Friday morning was a Sam Cooper to I-240 kinda day, which was fine until I hit the loop and realized that traffic was at a near standstill. I got a couple of lucky breaks and managed to shift over a couple of lanes, nicely positioning myself to avoid local traffic turning off onto Walnut Grove and Poplar. There I sat, parked, for at intents and purposes. Unfortunately, the driver of a small tan car wasn't that observant.

"Whoa!" That's what I yelled when I was struck on the rear passenger side of the vehicle. Maybe it's better that I didn't see it coming such that I didn't tense up. I looked up to see a small car making a severe course correction into the lane to my right, and then I saw them make another couple of quick adjustments and pull onto the shoulder of the road. I recovered and did the same, pulling in behind the driver. I stopped the car, turned it off, pulled out my phone, and began calling the police. Actually, I called 411 and had them transfer me to the police. Why not 911? Well, since I've been bombarded with TV commercials telling me to avoid using 911 for non-emergencies, I figured I was doing the right thing. Turns out I was not doing the right thing: the police told me to hang up and call 911. So I hung up and then realized I wasn't really aware of the situation yet. By this time the other driver had exited her vehicle and had walked around her car and then mine. She mumbled an apology and I asked her if she was okay, which, thankfully, she was. I called my wife and told her what had happened, and then I called 911.

And that's when the driver of the other car, a young black woman, about 5'1" or so, wearing scrubs and a white with pink and yellow pattern top got in her car while I wasn't looking, and drove off. No name, no license, no information.

Just so you know: leaving the scene of an accident is against the law in Tennessee.

I talked to the police, anyway, and they sent an officer who got to scene very quickly and took a report, and I have uninsured motorist coverage, so it's all good I suppose. It was when I got in my car and started driving off that I looked up and saw the Baptist Hospital sign that a few things clicked into place. 7:40 AM. Scrubs. Hospital. So, I figure there's a nurse at Baptist who ran into my car and then drove off to work. She drives a tan car. Her car is damaged on the front driver-side of the vehicle and may show signs of red paint.

Was she going to miss something important at work? Maybe. Was she uninsured, like ~40% of Memphis motorists? (that's an old figure, but still). Was she impaired? She was definitely groggy, especially for someone who had just hit another vehicle and should have been high on an adrenaline rush at the least. I can't say.

This is the second time I have been struck while not moving. The first time I was hit by someone pulling into an adjacent turn lane. It was dark. I got out and met a nice, older lady who admitted fairly quickly that she didn't have insurance, but that she wanted to pay to fix my vehicle. I took a look at her car, then at her, thought to myself, "she needs the money worse than I do", and told her no thanks. The damage was minor - heck, it added character to the truck.

Why the difference this time? Part of it is the vehicle. My wife keeps telling me that it wasn't my fault, but I still look at it as me causing damage to her favorite car that she wants to drive until it falls apart. Part of it I suppose it's because she didn't do what she should have done, really, and she got away with it. I do have a judgmental streak. Part of it is simple anger at myself for not doing some simple things, like immediately asking the other driver for her insurance card and taking a picture of her license plate with my cell phone. But part of it is that she didn't do what I wanted her to do. Yes, an accident is bad, but there's a breadth of ways they can be handled that can make all the difference, too, and I've seen that.

Did I expect some sort of karmic reward for my earlier gesture? No, but I sure wouldn't have minded if things turned out that way. Come Monday I'll be looking at the morning traffic a little more closely, but I'm wondering what I will do if I spot that driver. Part of me wants to stop her and pick up right where she left, with me calling the cops and seeing things handled properly. Part of me says, "Let it go." Part of me hopes that I don't see her, but that she sees me - often - and regrets driving off.

Brother Ed

2008-03-17T21:49:00.002-05:00

Brother Ed
Originally uploaded by jbgreer

That's a picture of Ed and I taken by my wife this past Saturday in our driveway.

Ed and I met during our undergraduate days at university. I say 'met', though I know that at first I had heard quite a bit about him (and maybe vice versa) before actually meeting him in person, so in some respects he was my first virtual friend before the current internet craze.

During those early college years, Ed and I hung around similar circles, linked by a few common friends and an even more common quest to obtain access to various computers and use even more computing time. There was a small cadre of what amounted to independent contractors on campus, and we had a sort of gentleman's agreement not to poach each others plum positions, but not to be too greedy, either. Suffice it to say that Ed and I enjoyed our fair share of work in nearly every lab of importance at the time. Later during graduate school, one of those labs would become our home-away-from-home - sometimes quite literally if the weather grew too hot for an apartment we shared a half a block from campus.

Now, at the time Ed and I belonged, perhaps unconsciously, to that long-haired hacker-ish tradition of guys who wore fairly impressive beards. [ I did have someone once describe my school id photo as looking as though "I had come down from the hills to axe-murder my momma." ] So, imagine if you will, two fairly ursine fellows walking the breadth of the city, my 1973 Buick LeSabre being an expensive beast to feed at the time, We ate together, lived together, worked together, in short, spent pretty much every waking moment of our grad school existence together. I count it as a treasured complement that Ed later admitted that he didn't think he could put up with anyone else for that long.

And, so, Ed and I would would walk into one of our old haunts and, inevitably, sooner or later someone would turn and ask, "Say.... are you two guys brothers?" We even had someone ask if we were twins, which I thought was too funny since, as many readers know, I am a twin... just not to Ed. At first we were shocked at the suggestion, then amused, then almost expectant.

Well, time does go by, and grad school (the first time) has long since past, and I got married and even took to shaving most years, usually in the Spring but recently in the Fall. Ed I have now known each other over 20 years, making him one of my longest tenured friends. I grew up with 3 sisters, and Ed has become over the years the closest thing I'll probably ever have to a brother, which is what I call him and he calls me, though he has some to spare.

This past Saturday Ed and I bailed on a planned geocaching trip due to rain and decided to run a few errands instead. We were standing in line waiting to checkout when the man in front of us picked up his bags, turned, and said, "Are you guys brothers?" I said no and grinned, turned to Ed and said, "That hasn't happened in a long time." It's the truth, but it isn't, you see. Yes we are.

Old blogs, time

2008-03-15T17:39:00.004-05:00

Some folks know that I post in a few places. One of those is my first blog, run on a site that created several years ago to host files for some friends and I. I didn't post there too frequently, either, except for one brief period before and during the Camino Frances pilgrimage. I've decided for various reasons to shutdown that blog, but I also decided copy over some of those old posts if only to give me yet another reason to think about the Camino.

Imagine my surprise when I started copying the posts and realized that my first direct Camino post was exactly 4 years ago today.

2008 Oxford Sacred Harp Sing

2008-03-09T18:51:00.002-05:00

2008 Oxford Sacred Harp Sing
Originally uploaded by jbgreer

This reason I had plenty to be happy about. For one thing my wife celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary on Saturday. We originally had more elaborate plans for an out-of-town getaway, but the Memphis weather (it snowed on Friday) and other factors convinced us to stay in town and simply enjoy the day together. On Sunday we got up early, especially if you adjust for that morning's daylight savings adjustment, and drove down to Oxford, MS, home to a well-organized Sacred Harp singings that has been going on for 28 years now. This was our second year to attend.

As for Sacred Harp: suffice it to say that it is a singing tradition that comes from early 19th century efforts to teach singing, but it appears to have continued as a way of preserving a tradition and providing an excuse for communities to gather together. The name Sacred Harp comes from one of the principal song books. There are other texts as well, but most (all?) share a common characteristic in that the music is engraved using a shape note system in which different relative pitches are assigned different shapes, hence the name.

The singing itself it difficult to describe. It is not refined chorale singing; it's more like a raw, powerful expression of joy, faith, and sometimes sorrow. I've read a description where a fellow said that he would travel 1000 miles to sing Sacred Harp but wouldn't cross the street to hear it. A review for
"Awake, My Soul: The Story of the Sacred Harp" quotes a reviewer at the Washington City Paper as saying, "Get enough people singing weird harmonies at the top of their voices and you start feeling a little sorry for the devil." I don't know how the Oxford sing compares to other smaller, rural singings, but I know that the energy in the air is palpable, and standing in the hollow square leading a song feels like home to me.

Rafting the New River

2008-02-17T19:45:00.003-06:00

Rafting the New River
Originally uploaded by jbgreer

This is one of my favorite pictures. Like all good pictures, there is a story behind it:

As I was finishing up my undergraduate degree I started working in the experimental psychology department in preparation for my next degree (or so I thought, but that's another story). That, in turn, put me in touch with many of the pych grad student population including a woman who befriended me, Marie L. Unfortunately for me, Marie ended up changing schools and moving to Louisville, KY fairly soon thereafter. So either in the 80's or very early 90's (my memory is a bit fuzzy as to exactly when) I took a Greyhound bus to visit her.

I don't recall much of the bus trip - the great Mackheath/Greer trip to Oregon stands out as a better travel adventure (another time, another tale), but I do recall that she picked me up at the bus station, took me by her place, and then announced that we were going to help a friend of her's move. Riiiiight. It wasn't so bad as it sounds, really, as the two friends were going on a trip with us. In fact, there were six people involved, so the moving was easy, and shortly afterwards we jumped into two cars and drove to a campsite near the New River in West Virginia.

After resting a bit, we made our way over to some outfitter company, got our life jackets, helmets, and paddles, and then hopped aboard the raft you see in the picture. The fella in back was our guide; I think his name was Mike.
The woman next in line is Janine R., who, as I recall it, later moved to NY state. That's me in the camo shirt with mountain man beard in full effect. Of the two next people, the one further away is Marie, who was wearing an actual wetsuit. (Marie was the kind of person who always prepared). Sadly, I can't recall the names of the others, though I think the other womans' nickname was Nee-nee?

That day was filled with fun. We rowed and learned our paces and then were fed a picnic lunch. Afterwards we rafted a rapids-filled section of the river, including a couple of class Vs. That night we had a huge party around a campfire with other rafters.

Principles of Operating Systems

2008-01-12T12:30:00.000-06:00

Okay, y'all need to run out and buy Principles of Operating Systems: Design and Application by Brian Stuart, but not a) not just because I work with him or b) because I'm listed in the acknowledgment section. Really. (See, it really does matter if you provide editorial advice to textbook authors.... if only to increase the likelihood of your name appearing in print.) No, you should buy the book because I say so. You got a problem with that?

New beginnings

2007-11-26T19:52:00.000-06:00

I've rejoined the corporate world. For the past year and a half I've been a consultant, chiefly working with the companies under one umbrella organization. In that role I took over a recently vacated developer position to tie up some loose ends. Of course, as is often the case, that work wasn't really about that work per se; rather, it was about the larger question of build vs. buy. The circumstances of my arrival facilitated a choice in the latter, and a year later my main work has been to transition two companies over to a new operations systems that they use day to day to perform the key work of their business. Of course, along the way the graphic artist left, too, and so another part of my work was to identify vendors to take over that work. Oh, and the network/system administrator left, too, so I took on those tasks as well. Oh yeah, there was the data center move, too - did I mention the new building? And the new line of business. And the hiring of a 1/2 FTE, thankfully, too. Not that I'm complaining, mind you - it was all good work, and good people to work with, too. But there are those times when you learn of opportunities and people that you've thought would be good to work with or for (in fact, I maintain a list), and too many factors lined up and said it was time to pursue a chance before it disappeared.

And then suddenly I knew

2007-09-21T17:48:00.000-05:00

Perhaps you've seen a post on the last lecture of Randy Pausch, a CMU professor dying of cancer. I was just watching the 2nd part of his lecture on YouTube, all the while thinking, "Why is this guy so familiar?" Virtual Reality? I attended a VR conference in 95.

Around 5 minutes into the 2nd lecture is when he talks about his family's visit to Disneyland, and he says about the photos on his slide, "There I am in front of the castle, and there I am on a ride. For those of you into foreshadowing, the ride is Alice." So the ride is the Mad Tea Cup, inspired by Alice in Wonderland, but that doesn't really matter, because what I figure out in that instant is how and I know him, and why, and where: Alice.

I attended and talked with him at the Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) conference 2006 in Houston, and I recall how wonderfully vital he was then. The very idea that this man is dying while so young seems so absolutely awful and cruel and wrong. So it may seem strange for me to say that I in spite of that, I still recommend watching the videos of his last lecture. They are sad and poignant, but inspirational and uplifting, too. This isn't some dry CS lecture. This is a wonderful summary of the dreams of his life and he went about trying to achieve them.

Subiaco

2007-09-10T18:52:00.001-05:00

Subiaco Abbey Courtyard
Originally uploaded by jbgreer

This past weekend my wife and I traveled to Subiaco, Arkansas, home of an Abbey and Academy and four hundred and some-odd residents. There we joined some members of our church including a priest and his wife, and another couple from a nearby congregation. We spent the weekend in a guest dormitory at the abbey, eating our meals in a church dining room and saying the daily office with the resident monks of the abbey.

In between we read readings that our clergy handed out to us and then gathered together to discuss what we thought about them. One of the most interesting questions raised was "When is the Sabbath?" Not in the literal sense of which day of the week, mind you, though that did get talked about a good bit, if only because of the modern collision of Sunday and that the Sabbath to many. Instead, the focus was more on the qualitative nature of Sabbath - what are the characteristics of Sabbath time. So I had a great surprise today in learning that an acquaintance of mine has decided to start taking Friday off as her 'Sabbath' time and that, coincidently, she had also been to Subiaco, though many years ago.

I do think that the pace of modern life does push us into very narrow and carefully considered rest. I think that many, myself certainly included, feel guilty when we are not working. I also think that that technology can have a positive effect and can reduce stress in our lives, but I don't seem to be around many people who share this opinion. Rather, I hear people complain about email and blackberries and other devices. They seem to forget that, paraphrasing the NRA, blackberries don't send emails, people do, and that email is the natural extension to the hand-written letter and the telephone. I wonder where the line is with such people, and I want to ask, "Are you okay with the wheel? Is fire adding too much stress in your life?"

Certain companies whose stock prices has fallen rather a lot in the last few days

2007-08-14T20:46:00.000-05:00

A friend sent me a email regarding the ruling on a legal matter between a certain software company and another software company in which a judge had ruled that the former company did not own the copyrights to a certain set of works that they claimed and that in fact the latter company still owned those copyrights.

As a result, it would seem that the former company's stock price has fallen rather a lot.

I have nothing to say about this matter. Really.

Software, Computing, and machines

2007-08-10T17:38:00.000-05:00

Inspired by a nice rant on being asked to fix computer problems, I thought I'd add my 2 cents.

I have an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering. I am not, however, a practicing engineer, or Professional Engineer, if you prefer. That said, I do know a fair amount about machines in general and computers in particular, and I've built the main machines that I use for personal/professional use for the last 10 years or so. I do so because it's fun, though I admit I am particular about some components. A computer is somewhere between a toaster and a nice stereo to me - it should be far simpler than it currently is, it should be reliable, and it should do what it's supposed to do well.

I have the better part of a master's degree in computer science; I've yet to finish and defend my thesis. I have been developing software for the last 25 years or so. In recent years I've gotten somewhat better at it, to the point that I often know what I'm doing or at least recognize when I am doing poorly.

Now, I admit that my home city is a bit of a technological backwater, a few exceptions aside, but still: stating that I am a software developer at a party or gathering of non-developers invariably produces the same response, something along the lines of, "Oh, I have a computer at home.... I just don't know how to do X", where X is something to do with email or document preparation or some use of some application on the machine. Or, better yet, the response is, "Can you fix Y?" where Y is some problem related to their ISP or network or mouse or anything really.

From which I've deduced that most of the people I meet have no idea what software development is as an activity or what that activity produces, and certainly no idea what sorts of process produces software. Which is maddening, really, because I've been doing this for 25 years and I want to ask them each time, "Where the %$*&&^ have you people been?"

So. You've read a book right? Not hard, really. Admittedly some are more difficult than others, and they have to be written in a language you understand, but the general procedure for reading a book of any size is largely the same. Start at one end, read the first page, read the next, repeat until the book is finished, close the book.

You've written a book, right? No, you likely haven't. You understand, though, that writing a book is harder than reading a book, in most cases. Yes, there are simple books. Still: writing takes a bit more creation, if you will, than the reading part.

Software development is like writing a book.

Software development is like writing a book for a computer to read, except the book is some crazy self-help book that tells the computer what to do and the computer has no choice but to do it.

I like that part of what I do. I do not like fixing computers for much the same reason that I am not an auto mechanic; it's not bad work, but it's not something I like or want to do unless it is absolutely necessary. And fixing applications, in as much as that is possible, isn't really enjoyable to me either. I use other people's software chiefly because it saves me time. Perhaps a lot of time, but, at the end of the day, it's all the same: it saves me time. So, and perhaps this is being uncharitable, but I don't like a lot of software that I have to use. On the otherhand, that's why I like open-source software; I like to be able to see how it works. That's a selfish concern, at one level, because most of the people that I meet could care less how software is made, even though I think they should care about someone's ability, perhaps not their own, to be able to see how the software they use is made. That's really a topic for a different conversation, though.

Ingmar Bergman

2007-07-30T21:16:00.000-05:00

Those who have read my profile will observe that I have a twin sister. Let me set the record straight, then:

Since we are of different genders, we are not identical. I've been asked that a lot, but the person who surprised me the most was an medical intern.
We do not have some sort of psychic connection, despite my sister's comments to the contrary regarding awareness of pain, etc.
We are not alike.

The last point is not a bad thing - it is simply a fact. I can't begin to cover the many ways in which we aren't alike. Today, however, I'll use another fact to illustrate this dissimilarity: my sister does not like Ingmar Bergman films. I seem to recall some episode during high school or early college when I picked up The Seventh Seal and somehow she ended up watching it. I think that choice led to a ban on what she called 'weird films' that I liked.

Today Ingmar Bergman died; he was 89. Meryn Rothstein's column in the NY Times quotes him as having said,

“I am very much aware of my own double self. The well-known one is very under control; everything is planned and very secure. The unknown one can be very unpleasant. I think this side is responsible for all the creative work — he is in touch with the child. He is not rational, he is impulsive and extremely emotional.”

I don't think this is a weird statement; I think it is the admission of an artist. I often like concrete art because I can sense the thought behind it, and I enjoy allegorical or metaphorical art because of the connections that are drawn in the work, but my perception of an artist is still of one who is irrational - one who is able to tap into a subconscious or other state of being that allows something visceral to be expressed. On the other hand, perhaps I want artists to be mystical because I don't want to understand the process too well.

A Pilgrim is not a tourist

2007-07-14T13:13:00.000-05:00

I'm reading Conrad Rudolph's Pilgrimage to the End of the World: The Road to Santiago de Compostela. While the book has a somewhat secular tone, I do think he makes some good observations (where good is generally defined as 'things that I somewhat agree with but haven't reconciled completely'.) Here's a snippet that I find interesting:

A pilgrim is a not a tourist. You have a deeper experience precisely because you are not an observer in the traditional sense of the word. Something changes. You are not exactly the same person you were before. The locals look to you as a special experience, authentic. Despite the distance, you are a participator, an authenticator, even more than the locals themselves. You are part of the cultural landscape, part of the original reason for being and the history of many of the towns through which you pass. This is the pilgrimage route, and it is a deeply ingrained part of the identity of the towns and people along it. Yours is the experience of a fully reconciled alienation: the pilgrim at once the complete insider, the total outsider. This is why the pilgrimage is not a tour, not a vacation, not at all a trip from point A to point B, but a journey that its both an an experience and a metaphor rather than an event. This is why the pilgrimage must be done on foot, never on a bicycle; why you must stay in refugios, not in hotels, and why the journey should be long and hard. And this is why you then experience a place and culture in a way vastly different than as a traditional visitor or even as a local.

When reading 'pilgrim' literature, I often find it useful to re-read passages substituting 'Christian' for 'pilgrim', if only to see whether my opinion of the passage changes.

Desktop, Sweet Desktop

2007-07-07T18:08:00.000-05:00

One of the great disadvantages of my most recent stint in grad school is that I had to switch my main home desktop machine over to Windows XP in order to run some of the tools that I used as part of my NSF fellowship work. So I made some backups of my existing system, bought a copy of XP (these guys tend to have pretty good pricing and you actually get what you pay for), and installed. Sigh.

I will say this: of all of the MS environments I've used, I like Windows XP Pro the most. My use of MS produced or influenced OSes includes

Xenix on the main processor of the Intel Scientific Hypercube.

Not bad, really.

MS-DOS in various versions

Adequate, I suppose, but I prefered CP/M (Xerox 820 model II), and even Apple's DOS on my ][e

OS/2

starting with 1.1 I think. I do recall that the TCP/IP stack up to around 1.3 was abysmal and crashed the entire machine.

Windows 3.1

Surely you're joking. I had used a Lisa and a NeXT Cube years before this.

Windows 95

Really. It's a joke, right? I mean, sure, it looks better, but ....

Windows NT

At this point I actually took notice of MS' OSes. Here was something that had legs. Legs with thick ankles, but legs.

XP was functional. I sorta knew where somethings were in XP. The truth of the matter is, though, that I had been running Linux (or GNU Linux, as some would prefer) for many years before that. So last weekend I bought a new hard drive, dug out my backups, downloaded a copy of Ubuntu, and re-took my desktop from the capitalistic forces that would seek to destroy... erm, nevermind. I re-established a desktop that I enjoy and can be productive on. Or at least that's the hope. I'm still remembering things, some in my fingers and some in my head.

Famous for the back of his head

2007-07-03T19:52:00.001-05:00

Maybe one day that will be my epitaph, when Sybil MacBeth is famous for her book and potential participants view her website and see the photo of past workshop.

The Seven Deadly Sins: Envy

2007-06-25T19:50:00.000-05:00

I've met a fair number of people I admire. I'm even related to a few of them. :-) I haven't met that many people that I envy, though. Don't get me wrong - I know plenty of people who are more talented, smart, wise, witty, etc., etc., etc., but at the end of the day I can't say I have a bad life at all. Pretty good, actually. Every once in a while, though, I meet someone who is willing to pursue their dream so faithfully and fearlessly that I'm awestruck and, well, envious.

World, meet Rebekah Scott. Rebekah, readers. Rebekah and her husband pulled up stakes and moved to Spain, right along the Camino Frances in Moratinos, Palencial, Spain. Read her blog sometime for a story of someone who has realized that life is too important not to do some living.

Resurfacing

2007-06-22T18:38:00.000-05:00

It seems like almost every blog that I have ever read has at least one entry wherein the writer says, "Sorry I haven't written lately. I've been really busy."

Well, I've been really busy, but today was a turning point. On Monday, the Good Lord willin' and the Creek don't rise(?), one of my clients will 'go live' with a new software system.

School of the Pilgrim

2007-06-09T20:02:00.000-05:00

My copy of Brett's new book, School of the Pilgrim: An Alternative Path to Christian Growth, showed up yesterday. I wrote him a quick note to which he replied, "You know most of the stories in the book. Hopefully the framework BEHIND the pilgrimage makes sense."

Even in a citation in the book I've already found a comment I like very much: "Huston Smith writes that since we are embodied souls, we have to act out our faith with our bodies as well as our minds and spirits."

I still struggle with my personal definition of a pilgrimage, and I don't yet completely understand Brett's thesis of the Christian life as pilgrimage, but I do believe that Brett's core notions are good ones. To say that you are a pilgrim is to say that you are seeking God.

2nd Concert of the Season

2007-06-02T19:50:00.000-05:00

Well I am late posting about it, but we did have our second concert of the season on June 2nd. We sang two pieces from our repertoire

Spaseniye Sodelal, by Pavel Grigorievich Chesnokov and
Song of Peace by Vincent Persichetti

I thought we did well on both pieces, but once again we evoked very strong comments from the audience regarding the Chesnokov.

Afterwards, Mike R (another 2nd tenor), my wife and I walked to a nearby cafe to have a celebratory cocktail and to discuss the performance. I think we are doing well on the Chesnokov because we are singing in Russian, not in spite of it. That is, since almost all of us are singing phonetically, I think we are focusing heavily on the dynamics of the individual syllables, rather than focusing on how we should sing them rather than how we normally say them. Since we know only one pronunciation, we skip all the vowel complexity and concentrating on making good sounds.

Or at least that's my working theory.

1st Concert of the Season

2007-05-27T20:33:00.001-05:00

Today was a great day for singing. The group did two of our new works for the 2007 season:

Spaseniye Sodelal, by Pavel Grigorievich Chesnokov, and

The Last Words of David by Randall Thompson

We sang the former in Russian; luckily, one of our 2nd Tenors got his PhD in Russian, so he taught us how to pronounce the text, which translates to "Salvation is created in the midst of the earth, O God. Alleluia." What I didn't know about the piece until a little while ago is that:

"When communism fell years after his death, and the Russian Orthodox church opened its doors again, Chesnokov's Salvation is Created - a piece he had never heard performed himself - became the unofficial anthem of the church. Salvation is Created is one in a cycle of ten Communion Hymns, Op. 25, and is based on a cantus firmus chant taken from Obihod notnago peniya, the codex that contained the major musical components of the Russian Orthodox liturgical repertoire." [1]

The latter piece is based on 2 Samuel 23:3-4. It is a very dramatic piece with a very forceful entrance. The initial verse says, "He that ruleth over [all] must be just."

Despite this being Memorial Day weekend, we had a good turnout and were well covered in all the voices, and I think we did an excellent job, especially on the Thompson.

[1] Wikipedia contributors, "Pavel Grigorievich Chesnokov," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pavel_Grigorievich_Chesnokov&oldid=84721467 (accessed May 28, 2007)

Memphis in May meets Camino Frances

2007-05-26T14:51:00.000-05:00

Last night my wife and and several other couples made our way down to Joysmith Gallery in downtown Memphis to catch an art exhibit featuring the Camino de Santiago. The camino - caminos, really, since there are multiple routes, are a set of pilgrimage routes to the city of Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. My wife and I undertook a partial camino in May of 2004; my friends Eric & Joan walked the entire Camino Frances (480 miles) that same year.

The exhibit is a touring display of photos and paintings by American pilgrims. The tour started at The College of William & Mary; Memphis is the 2nd exhibition. Last night all the attendees were honored to have the curator of the collection, George Greenia, on hand to describe the Camino and answer questions. George is a former Franciscan monk who now teaches in the Medieval and Renaissance Studies department at W&M, where he leads groups of students on pilgrimage. He also helps coordinate the Annual Gathering of Pilgrims when it meets in Williamsburg, VA. and edits the American Pilgrim magazine.

It was great to talk to a fellow pilgrim, especially a more experienced one. My friend Eric got to talk to him about his own Fulbright studies in Belgium. George invoked Goethe's statement that 'the Camino created Europe', which appeared to please Joan. My wife is going to see about arranging another Memphis visit for George to speak at our church.

Grayston Ives' Missa Brevis

2007-05-20T14:58:00.000-05:00

Today was Grayston Ives' Missa Brevis, including yours truly in a double quartet for the Agnus Dei. Very nice. It was only after performing the piece that I learned of Ives' participation in the King's Singers.

Ghosts of Spain

2007-05-11T10:21:00.000-05:00

I've been reading Ghosts of Spain by Giles Tremlett. I wouldn't call it a novel; it's more a set of linked essays that discuss post-Franco Spain, and even then not so much what happened as what has not happened. From what I've read so far, the author feels that a real political integration of opposing forces still hasn't taken place - that the Spanish approach to much of the Franco-era history has been to forget much of what happened. Of course, we're talking about a book written by a British ex-pat journalist who I think wants to see something along the lines of South African reconciliation tribunals, and who wonders aloud how Spanish judges can pursue Pinochet while ignoring their own issues.

Good reading so far. I admit that I am almost entirely ignorant of recent Spanish history.* I mean, I knew a little of Franco and the larger divisions within Spain, but not why such divisions exist (even still, hence the book). I imagine I need something even more recent to cover the current social scene.

* I still l recall the first time I heard of Franco. Unfortunately, I was in my early teens. At the time there was a fairly famous line regularly repeated by Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live: "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead." I had no idea what that meant, though I did find the idea of someone "still dead" pretty funny on the face of it.

Life as Pilgrimage

2007-05-05T18:59:00.000-05:00

Today my wife and I traveled down to Canton, MS to meet Brett Webb-Mitchell, author of several books including Follow Me and the newly published School of the Pilgrim: An Alternative Path to Christian Growth, and founder of The School of the Pilgrim. Brett was actually meeting with Rev. Rob Hill and several members of Broadmeadow United Methodist Church. While I don't want to steal any of Brett's thunder, I will say that Brett is a man who gets pilgrimage - as a physical act, but also as the subject of metaphor of Christian living, in a way that I haven't seen expressed before.

The Tale of the Pirate

2007-05-02T22:32:00.000-05:00

Once there was a pirate. Being a pirate, he loved treasure. In fact, the only thing he liked better than treasure was buried treasure. He sailed the seven seas searching for buried treasure. He found treasure beneath the waves. He found treasure on distant islands. He found treasure in the many ports that he called home. The pirate found more treasure than any pirate alive, but he still wasn't satisfied. So one day he started hiding his own treasure. He buried treasure here, there and everywhere. He even buried treasure on his own ship! The other pirates said, "Arrrr, there be a fine pirate who be willing to share his booty!"

But then a funny thing happened: the pirate started finding his own treasure and re-claiming it as his own. Now that is a funny thing for a pirate to do, with so much treasure in the world.

I leave it to my friends to find the moral behind this tale.

Men's Retreat, Party, and the Photo Shoot

2007-04-29T21:55:00.000-05:00

It has been a busy weekend, starting Friday afternoon. The men's group at my church held a retreat at an event center not far from a great caching park. The spiritual leader of the weekend was John Baker, who is now in Alexandria, VA, but was at my church when I first starting attending. [ He also used to own a car repair shop that is still open and still called by the original name - Baker Auto. ] It was a great weekend for all, but especially for me, I think, because one of the greatest disadvantages to being in a church choir is that you don't get a chance to meet a lot of the other folks in church, in spite of the fact that you're often there more often (or at least more consistently) than many of the members. So I enjoyed actually meeting a lot of familiar faces.

Today (Sunday) was also the day for the 'other' singing group that I'm in. We elected to have a professional photographer shoot our promotional photo that we will use in our advertisements and other marketing collateral. I am curious as to how the photos will turn out; we certainly did spent quite a bit of time arranging the members and selecting a variety of locations.

After the shoot we gathered at the director's house for a potluck supper that ended up being quite a feast. Hopefully this (sans the photo shoot) will become a 5th Sunday tradition!

GeoGreeting

2007-04-29T16:22:00.000-05:00

BDD posted a link to a fun url - GeoGreeting. It's a yet another site that allows you construct personalized messages, but in this case the letters are actually overhead shots of buildings.

Here's an example.

My Personal Blog

2007-04-29T11:18:00.000-05:00

For those of you reading along at home: this is my personal blog. Since I am independent consultant, I don't need to say this, but the opinions expressed herein are mine and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employers.

Since it is my personal blog, I feel entitled to write whatever I want. In fact, that's the only reason that this blog exists: to allow me a public forum in which to state whatever I want to say. To suggest otherwise is ludicrous.

By extension, I have no qualms about moderating any comments left on this blog (though I have yet to do so). Visitors have no first amendment rights here. If you have something to say, say it, but if I don't like it, tough. Start your own blog and say whatever you want to say there if you have a strong desire to make yourself heard. It's cheap and easy.

It is only in the Commons, such as community forums and the like, that anyone should have any expectation of privilege.

Geocaching & People

2007-04-26T15:32:00.000-05:00

I am a geocacher. To those of you unfamiliar with the term, suffice it to say that I use billion-dollar military satellite technology to find tupperware containers hidden in the woods. Hey, everybody needs a hobby. I belong to several geocaching organizations, including the Geocachers Of West Tennessee, founded by my friend Steve Spencer aka spencersb and the Jackson Area Geocachers, founded by my friend Damon Mays, aka BigDaddyD.

There is some tension between the two organizations, which is strange when you consider that belonging to a geocaching organization is optional and of little real value. Really, there appears to be some tension/dislike/animosity/hate between specific individuals in the two organizations. The situation is not pleasant, and occasionally it is difficult, especially when you hear or read people from one side say ugly things about the other. All of which is to say that I've determined that my geocaching experience, at least as it regards to cachers, is a lot like my work experience, as it regards to workers. To wit:

There are people that I like that I like to work with.
There are people that I do not like that I like to work with.
There are people that I like that I do not like to work with.
There are people that I do not like that I do not like to work with.

Substitute geocache for work and the axioms hold. Some of my feelings are driven by differences in opinion on what geocaching means. The first and the fourth are obvious, but the second and the third have made work - and geocaching - more interesting. I've had co-workers who were interesting, kind, good-hearted people, but who were completely inept in their jobs. I've had co-workers who were skilled professionals, but unethical, callous, and rude.

For those who haven't geocached, trust me when I say that there is quite a variety of opinions about the trivia of geocaching: what it means to claim the finding of a geocache, what is the intent of placing a geocache, where should they be placed, even what size container is appropriate. Ultimately these are petty distinctions, though. Geocaching is voluntary, and the specifics of hiding and searching for geocaches enjoys remarkable liberty. These differences aren't what are driving the the GOWT vs. JAG feud, though. I think the reasons for those fights are more universal and rooted in fear, mistrust, greed, and lust.

Cache Maintenance and the Felling of Trees

2007-04-21T08:44:00.000-05:00

This morning I got up early and went out to do a little cache maintenance. A friend from grad school has recently started caching; he told me that the log for Arc d' Memphis was full, so I replaced it. I then drove over to do a little work on In the Middle of East Memphis.

Recently I had visited IMEM to check on the container, which had been reported missing. Sure enough, the container, which was suspended 20 feet up in a tree and attached by wire cable, was gone. Fortunately, there were plenty of clues as to who took it, as the surrounding area was filled with pot-smoking kids, some sitting in the tree next to where I was standing. They had driven a vehicle back into the park and had the doors wide open, playing the stereo. Did I mention that there was a park picnic table mounted up in one of the trees?

This morning I returned to the park to find a new situation. Shortly after walking back to the original container site, a park service vehicle drove by, followed shortly thereafter by two dump trucks and a front-end loader. The real change, though, was that the park commission has cut all of the lower limbs off of the magnolias and is cleaning up the debris.

On one of the trees youths had already nailed 2x4's to re-create the steps provided by the branches. They had even painted a message on them, something like "Patrick and Drew will find a way" and "why did you do this to our trees" and some insults for the park commission. Maybe they will get to enjoy the trees. I hope that this is the beginning of a better Audubon park.

CITO and #800

2007-04-15T12:37:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I woke early, dressed in some old clothes (including my favorite long sleeved shirt), and drove out a little past Jackson, TN to Natchez Trace State Park. The park is the largest state park in TN and home to several lakes, lots of trails of the equestrian and hiking kind, several campsites and less rustic places to stay. It was also the site of the first Jackson Area Geocachers CITO event, which was the reason for my visit. The 2 hour drive was uneventful except for the threat of rain and the chance encounter (!) of cgeek and Mackheath making their way to Jackson for a day of caching. I, on the otherhand, encountered a couple of turkeys on the road into the park, and was followed closely by the event organizer, BigDaddyD, and his wife Mrs. T. We were joined shortly thereafter by LilLuckyClover, Dalls, and Yogi. With various implements of destruction in hand we traversed a couple of the local trails and removed encroaching plantlife and trash. Along the way I picked up a couple of caches. After completing one trail, LLC and I hitched a ride and were driven to a couple of cache sites in the park; it's always handy to be riding with the cache maintainer, and BDD is also on the board of the 'Friends' association of the park. After lunch Yogi led/followed me as I picked up 5 more caches. A low total for the day perhaps (10), but just enough to bring my total number of finds to 800, which was my other goal for the day. I still have plenty of caches to find in the park, and what I've learned about the amenities is enough to convince my wife that she and I need to plan a visit during the summer.

What I get out of caching

2007-04-04T16:25:00.000-05:00

Recently I had occasion to talk to a bunch of fellow geocachers. I asked them a bunch of questions, but the most interesting point of the exchange was when one of them finally turned the tables and asked a question of the form, "What do you expect to get out of X?", where X is a geocaching group. I hadn't really considered the question before, though I had a fair idea, inspired, in part, by GOLUM, a Linux user group I formed years ago. A friend of mine even joked once that "[I'm] an organization man" and, in some ways, I guess I am. Perhaps this will be repetitious to some (all) of the readers of this entry, but I'll repeat myself if only to preserve my thoughts. My central premise is this:

I believe that most clubs are social in nature.

When I organized GOLUM, I formed it chiefly to help draw out like-minded individuals in my community. I assumed that some of them knew more than I did about a particular subject of interest - Linux - and I thought that by providing a group I could meet them, facilitate an exchange of ideas, and teach myself and others a few new tricks. The Linux part was useful - it gave the group a common purpose - but I really expected a much broader benefit. I'm happy to say that I was right in that regard, as GOLUM members are diverse, bright and eclectic. Some of the members have had a tremendous impact on my life.

Now, I started caching because I thought the idea of a high-tech treasure hunt was cool - and it is. The very idea that orbiting satellites are providing real-time location information to a tiny, handheld radio is wonderful. Geocaching searches have taken me to obscure, interesting, dangerous, even beautiful places that I likely would never had seen. Still, at the end of the day I prefer caching with a friend to caching alone, and I think that talking about caching with other cachers is an important part of the game. I hope, though, that caching extends beyond that, in truly useful ways. I'm a believer in CITO for that reason: I think it extends geocaching to the surround community is a socially beneficial way. The caching crowd is another social/business network, but most of the cachers that I actually know go beyond trying to assess "who's who" or "who can do what for me." Yes, some of the sharing is superficial, but some of it is real, not for all, but for those who seek it.

So, what do I want out of a geocaching group? I want a chance for these sorts of interactions to occur. Real life bleeds into hobbies. Groups are a good way to take advantage of that.

Sunday

2007-04-04T16:17:00.000-05:00

Singing updates: last Sunday was Hoiby's Let This Mind Be in You, because of the associated NT reading. All in all it went well.

Later that afternoon was a Happy Birthday that doesn't quite count.

Chorale rehearsal focused on Down by the Salley Gardens, Persichetti's Song of Peace, and Lennon and McCartney's Yesterday. The Salley Gardens is coming along, though it is a bit sentimental for my tastes. Song of Peace still needs a little work, but I think it will be a very strong piece for us. Yesterday was suprisingly difficult to sing the first time, chiefly, I suspect, because so many of us were familiar with it. I, for one, kept singing what I expected (from years of radio exposure) rather than what was written. The second pass was markedly better, though, as the quarter vs. dotted quarter rhythms were corrected.

Engraving

2007-03-30T21:10:00.000-05:00

I guess you could say that I have odd hobbies. During my most recent stint in grad school I came to appreciate typesetting since I produced a number of manuscripts intended for publication. For this I used LaTeX. LaTeX is about as far away from WYSIWYG "Word Processing" as you can get these days [there are editors to help with that, but I prefer text editors] , but I think the results are superior, and it is certainly easier in my opinion to do scientific publication preparation in LaTeX than, say, Microsoft Word. But I digress...

As you might have gathered, I like to sing, and I do sing in a couple of choirs. Without naming any names, suffice it to say that one of my choir directors hand-writes descants and the like for use with certain hymns we perform. Admittedly his fist is better than mine, but I still prefer a typeset look, or, as I recently learned, an engraved look. So I've taken up engraving, in part to reproduce his work in a more legible form, but also because I get some kind of (perverse?) pleasure in doing it. As a sample, the picture is of Breedlove's I'm Going Home. I've transformed it from shape-notation to a more modern form. [There are likely errors in transcription; use at your own risk. ]

Garmin POI loader

2007-03-27T18:13:00.000-05:00

Another neat garmin utility that I hadn't played around with before is the custom point of interest (POI) loader. This is another free download from the Garmin site. It allows you to upload comma-separated value (CSV) and gpx files to your Garmin unit.
[ Check the Garmin site for POI Loader compatibility with your unit. ]

On X units (i.e. those with microSD cards), these files are stored on the card rather than in the unit's memory. While this isn't a replacement for the built-in geocache functionality, it does offer some interesting options.:

the number of POIs is limited only by the size of the microSD card, rather than the hard limit (<1000?)>
each entry can contain a latitude/longitude, name, and description (though there is a limit to the amount of text each entry can contain)
Some people are using this feature to generated expanded listings, including difficulty/terrain - even decoded clues - for their geocache waypoints.
custom POI's can be searched for and even used in auto-routing
several different POI files (databases, according to Garmin) can be loaded at once, and the user can select which is displayed
according to the documentation, custom waypoint icons can be associated with each POI file (though several people are having difficulty with this feature, and I have not tested it)

There is a GSAK macro that produces entries in a useful CSV format, though some are simply uploading custom GPX files. I'll write more after I have used this software.

Garmin xImage utility

2007-03-27T18:04:00.000-05:00

While surfing the 'net the other night I came across a couple of articles describing utilities that work in conjunction with several models of Garmin GPS units. One is a utility called 'xImage' that allows you to send/receive screenshots and waypoint images(?) to/from your Garmin GPS. xImage is a free download from the Garmin site. To use it, you

install it on a computer that already has the Garmin GPS USB drivers
connect your Garmin GPS to the computer
turn on the GPS and wait for your computer to recognize the device
run the xImage utility

By default, xImage will capture a screenshot of whatever is currently on the Garmin GPS display. You can then save the image as a bit-mapped (BMP) file. The image above is a test that I just downloaded.

Nevada

2007-03-26T20:06:00.000-05:00

An old buddy of mine from my college days (the second time, not the first or third) has seen fit to join the blogging and the caching world. No - not Uncle Mack - he already belongs to both. I'm talking about Nevada Mouse, "the World's Greatest Mouse Adventurer." Yawn.

Sorry, where was I? Oh, right, Nevada. Of course, in typical Nevada fashion he's doing it completely backwards, having decided on his caching name first (well, see below), having created a blog to boast of his exploits, and soon to be signing up for the Geocachers of West Tennessee forums. We'll see if he actually manages to find a cache. Mackheath has promised to take him out soon, I think, and I may drag him out for a little cache maintenance that I have do around town. [ I have a side bet stating that he will become completely disenchanted before he hits 100 finds, but you never know. ]

Nevada has been known by that name for some time now; as you might guess, it has some loose connection to a certain archeologist movie hero, which, coincidently, is his profession, and how we first met as grad students back in the day. Admittedly he's spent a lot more time outdoors than I have since then, including a few exotic locales. Thankfully he's given me authoring privileges on his site so that I can add some, ahem, realistic perspective on his exploits.

Nothing to see here

2007-03-26T14:35:00.000-05:00

Until recently I didn't know there was a picture of an event that I'm famous for - the breaking of a chandelier at a Mexican restaurant in Jackson, TN. Thankfully BigDaddyD grabbed this one, taken shortly after I had uttered what has become one of my taglines - Nothing to see here. The restaurant was very nice about the whole thing, which is good, because I really did give that light fixture a good knock.

Vehicle repair

2007-03-26T14:28:00.000-05:00

At a recent CITO event I noticed the tale-tell signs that my vehicle needed some brake work. Today I followed my wife downtown and dropped off the cachemobile at Reed's Auto Safety Service, Inc., at 711 Monroe Ext. A while back they patched my wife's tire for free (courtesy of an intro from a friend); for payment they asked that she remember them if she ever needed additional repairs. I've been a fan of that sort of policy from my AutoZone days. I'll let you know how things go.

Follow up: Good service, reasonable price. Recommended.

Okay, I lied.

2007-03-25T18:02:00.000-05:00

I said that would post more. Obviously, I didn't, given that it is now 6 months or so since my last post. In fact, the greatest continuity between my last post and this is that now I'm entering that period of the year when I yearn to shave my beard off. At least this year I won't be reading the 'Jesus' portion of the Passion according to St. Luke; last year I shaved prematurely, it seems, and disappointed the head of the lectors.

Singing today was Petrarch's Ah Jesus. Unfortunately, Joe wasn't in attendance, which meant that the sounds that have been in my left ear for all of the rehearsals was missing and replaced with a different voice. Not a bad voice, either, but, still, different, which tends to throw me off a little. The whole piece was tentative, both temporally and harmonically, made worse by the fact that the piece had odd, minor chords that don't come readily to the ear or voice. I loused up Section IV, though I did make a strong entrance on III. Oh well, we get another try during the Vigil.

I've just done a query on Geocaching.com and see that there are 20 caches within 3.3 miles of my house, including several that I have no good reason not to go for. I need to dig out the scraps of paper that have solutions for several of the puzzle caches - I would be much further along if I didn't keep losing my work. I hope my new GSAK scheme helps that.

The Beard is back

2006-10-07T18:27:00.000-05:00

Three weeks ago I decided to re-grow my beard. This comes as no suprise to those who know me - most of the last mumble mumble years I've had one. Still, shaving has been for a while a rite of Spring, with bearding occuring in the Fall. So, here it is. What I've forgotten is what it's like to be around folks who don't know that. My recent consulting gig(s) have put me in the company of real strangers, and they don't know or understand that history.

Graduate school wasn't quite the same experience, even though there were more strangers present in the environment. Maybe it is because I was less invested in the opinions of many of my peers there - after all, having been through the process before, I am aware of how tenuous the connections with some of the students really are. Still.

Loose Change

2005-01-11T16:52:00.000-06:00

Today I put up the Christmas tree. While I was in the attic, I cleaned up a few boxes and what not. That, in turn, led to moving around a few things, like an old dresser that we store up there. And that, gentle readers, led me to open the drawers of the dresser to see if anything was in there. And there was.... *treasure*.

A long time ago I began taking the change out of my pockets and putting it in a container. The first container was a piggy bank, of a sort, with a chain and a lock. Later, I just switched to a cup or a jar. Before Terre and I moved, I separated all of the quarters, nickels, and dimes into plastic bags. Those bags are what I found in the dresser drawer. What to do? Cash them in! I took them to a local Kroger's, which has one of those change counting devices. Fifteen minutes later... and I do mean at least 15 minutes, I had a voucher for $230. In the words of Napoleon, "Sweeeet!".

Nothing suceeds like success, so I went home, dug out my other change boxes, dumped them into another bag and went back. My total take for the day? Around $333.

Granted, I've known plenty of people who collected loose change. Heck, I met one guy who used to save over $1500 dollars a year that way. Still, I was suprised by the amount and delighted with the result.

Energy?

2005-01-06T10:48:00.000-06:00

I've heard people talk about energy. Specifically, deriving energy from things, places, people I suppose. Emotions. Actions? I don't know what they mean, really, though I speculate, now and then, about it. Energy, to the engineer in me, has something to do with power, potential or expressed. It has do do with transformation, too. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with what others mean.

I know that I've places that have elated me (Santiago) or depressed me (Dachau), and that's a sort of power, or energy, that the place has. I think such places have an immediate effect (awe) and then a lingering effect, which might be some dilution of the experience, or perhaps even something created within us out of the experience, like conflict.

I think that some places have such a power to them. Most of the ones I can think of have a strong cultural meaning to them, and I wonder if they might have the same impact on someone from, say, China, as me. Of course, the places I'm thinking when I say that are more than locations. They are cities, or towns, or villages, and I think it is the humanity of the place that affects me. In particular, it is the art of the place, especially the architecture. Architecture seems to have an immediate ability to force the viewer to compare the space to something known, whether it is the interior of some gothic cathedral or a simple hut in India. Not that there is anything wrong with just accepting the beauty of a place, but when I see such places, I think of their age, the work that caused them to be created, the events that happened here. Perhaps buildings store up the power of events that made them. Or perhaps we analyize and give these places their power in respecting what they represent.

On the other hand, the natural world has its beauty, too. Seeing the Grand Canyon should affect anyone. It simply should, whether that reaction is disbelief, or amazement, or terror. Do we give these places their power? For some reason I am more certain that their power is universal - that anyone, from anywhere and anytime, would react to them.

Do we seek such places for their effect on us? Do we go to them expecting, demanding to be changed? Is the goal of the explorer to convince others to want to be changed? To be the first to be transformed by some new power?

"..for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."

2005-01-05T12:41:00.000-06:00

Hebrews 13:2 is an interesting verse, part of which I've quoted in the title. The verse says, "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." I don't know much about angels. I don't really understand the special status accorded them. I don't understand their power or ability, which is a very human way of looking at things, I suppose, and not at all in keeping with thoughts of the divine, or at least holy. Angels have been called messengers, or vice-versa. We have angels of mercy and angelic praise, as a hymn or two reminds us.

Yet, in spite of my disbelief in angels, or perhaps because of it, I've had two occasions where I felt so strongly that I was interacting with angels that it spooked me. The first time was over ten years ago. The second was recent - the morning of Christmas Eve, 2004.

Many years ago - such that I can't recall when, really, but, generally, let's say 12 years ago or so, I took a trip down to Atlanta from Memphis. I went down there to visit a couple of friends and to participate in the closing service of a weekend retreat. My visit was a surprise, which meant that I couldn't stay at the retreat center the night before. Instead, I sought a hotel room nearby. That was a mistake. You see, Atlanta was busy that weekend. There was a baseball game being played in town. There was a basketball exhibition game being played. And there was a gathering of students from nearly every black college and university in the country for their joint spring break. Atlanta was crowded. There were no rooms nearby.

So, I kept driving East, until I was well past my destination, well into unfamiliar territory, and finally somewhere near hotels/motels with rooms to let. I stopped, booked a room, ate dinner, and went to sleep.

In the morning, I woke early and decided to take a look around as I had several hours to kill. Folks who know me know that I don't eat breakfast. Folks who have traveled with me know that I do. That's one of my personal contradictions: I eat breakfast on the rode, but not at home. Breakfast, in this case, meant WaffleHouse, and unavoidable feature of practically every interstate interchange in Georgia. So, I found one, went in, and waited for a spot to sit down. Soon, a barstool became available, and I sat down.

Now, folks who know me also know that I'm generally not one for talking to strangers. Heck, I'm not much for talking, usually, though the right crowd sometimes can produce odd results. But, it so happened that the stool next to mine opened up shortly after I sat down, and a middle-aged black man sat down next to me, and we mumbled our respective "mornin'" to each other. He had a local paper, and so I went out on a limb and asked him if he know the reason for the crowds I'd run into, etc. He knew alright - some of his wife's college friends were in town because of it, and he'd had his fill of reunions and too many women in his house, and had decided to go out and catch breakfast and a little peace and quiet. We laughed about that and I commiserated (I have 3 sisters myself) and then shifted to the weather, the local sports, and events of the day. He finished breakfast before I did, and he paid, and then he got up to leave. That's when he turned around, looked at me squarely in the eye, and said, "You be careful out there today."

That was an odd remark, I thought, but well-intentioned, and so I thanked him, and we said our goodbyes. He left, and shortly after I left. I got in my car and decided to take a little drive around Atlanta.

I still can't tell you exactly where I went that day. I drove all over - and I took a few u-turns, getting off the interstate and getting back on, trying to stay in the general quadrant of my ultimate destination. At some point, though, I got lost, or at least out of sight of the signs that I wanted to see. [A useful working definition of lost, at least for me.] I took a few turns, and then I was in a very different place. Graffiti became prominent. Fences. Boards on windows, bars on doors. Gang symbols, sprayed on corners, cars, streets. The general signs of urban decay. Suddenly, I was a little nervous, and I got the distinct impression I was in an area of town that, in the wrong circumstances, could be dangerous.

I should explain how I traveled back then. I had a fairly small car with bucket seats up front. I would slide the passenger seat back as far as possible, which allowed a good-sized cooler to be placed in the floorboard. I would stock up on ice, cokes, sandwiches, cheese, apples - snacks for the road. It was very handy.

I should also explain that my little car had a few miles on it, and that some of those miles had been hard ones. I had driven from Memphis to Milwaukee in that little car, at a pretty good clip. I had driven from Memphis to Atlanta in a little under 5 hours. My car rebelled at such treatment in subtle ways; sometimes, for instance, the electric windows would stop working.

Here I was, then, lost in Atlanta, in a rough neighborhood by the looks of it.

I looked up and saw a guy walking down the sidewalk. In a few moments he would walk in front of my car. He was a young black man in his 20's. He looked tough. He had the right number of tattoo's to fulfil a gangster stereotype. And he was looking at my car. So, I did the what I thought I should do: I tried to roll my window up. Remember how I said my car misbehaved on occassion. That's what they call foreshadowing, because that's exactly what happened. My window refused to budge. My fingers were glued to the controls, and my eyes were glued to the fellow who was, by now, walking in front of my car, then a little to the left, a little more, almost to the corner, and then he stopped. And I got very nervous and to what this fellow was up to. He stopped, and then he turned around, looked at me, and started walking back. Over to my window. Next to my car. And then he leaned down, put his arm on the window, and said, "Hey man, you got a pepsi in that cooler?"

i've always been of the coke congregation, so I told him no. Then I told him I had a coke, and he asked for one, and I gave it to him. He stood up, wiped his brow, popped his coke top, took a sip, and leaned back down. He looked at me and said, "Say, what's a white boy like you doing here?" I waited a second, and then he continued, "You need to get out of here. You need to drive straight two blocks. Then you need to turn right. Then you need to keep driving."

I said, "Okay" and I waited for the light to change (again) and then I took off.

Perhaps you're wondering what this has to do with angels. Or, maybe you've jumped ahead and you're asking yourself, "Who is the angel?" Is it the first man who warns me, or is it the guy who helped me, or is it both? I don't know. I like to think both. I like to think the first was a messenger. Did my offer of a cold drink on a hot Atlanta day transform someone into an angel? That's silly, but be not forgetful to entertain strangers, even if they look like young black gangsters. In the bible, angels have men's names - Michael, Gabriel.... but we're not supposed to believe they are ordinary men. When I close my eyes, my angels have black faces. So be it. That was my first visitation. Real angels? Do you care?

Christmas Eve began early for me. About 4AM, I heard a familiar winter sound - the sound of wheels spinning on slick ice. My hearing is good, anyway, but there is something about the resonance of that sound that penetrates my skull. This was a persistent sound, or at least the sound of a persistent driver. After I little while, I was good and awake and I figured I might as well go out and see what was happening. That, thankfully, didn't take long: a young black soldier, on leave and back in Memphis, had swapped the ends of his car across the street from my neighbor's house, and had slid off into a small ditch. As I approached him, he was giving the accelerator everything he could, wheels spinning furiously, but to no avail.

I walked over and he rolled down his window, and I leaned in and said, "Son, you're pretty good and stuck." He laughed, and agreed. I asked the usual questions, "Have you driven on ice? What gear is your car in? Front-wheel drive?" and quickly figured out that he really didn't know what to do, didn't really want to leave his car (despite my offer to drive him to his destination) and that he really believed he might get his car lose. So, we rocked it back and forth for a while and other tricks all designed to free his trapped vehicle. Nothing doing.

After a while, I walked back over to my house, got my flat-bladed shovel, came back over, and started digging away some of the ice. I don't think I'll ever forget the nice, one-inch thick sheets that I split that day. Great big sections, long as your arm. Even after digging enough traction for one wheel, he still had another buried over halfway in mud. He spun his wheels for maybe a half hour more.

I had another bright idea, so I went back to the house, had my wife open the garage, and was going to grab some firewood to put under his muddy tire. That's when I heard voices. I looked back up the road and there was another guy standing in the middle of the street, talking to the young soldier. I decided to walk back down.

The new fellow had a thin jacket on and was talking loud enough to wake the neighbors, (or so I hoped, secretly). He looked at the car and laughed. He walked around it and shook his head. He told me none of the coke trucks had gone out the day before, the streets where so bad, and that this morning was even worse, slick as glass, and that he didn't see how anybody was getting around. We agreed that even a wrecker would have trouble on the perfect ice skating rink near the corner, and that the car was very stuck, and he said, "You know, firewood might do the trick", I walked back up to my house, and my wife opened the garage, and I got a couple of pieces wood to prop under the car wheels. As I was walking back to the street, though, I heard a different sound, and so I dropped the wood, walked further, and saw the car in the middle of the street, pointing the right direction. I walked on, and they explained that they had just, "rocked her free" and that he was ready to drive home. I told the solder to put his car in low and to "take it light on the accelerator" and wished him well. The soldier asked for my name, thanked me, wished me a Merry Christmas, and slowly took off down the street. The other fellow wished me a good night and started walking off as well. I turned around and started walking back to my house, cold, tired, but happy at the prospect of a little quiet. I was even happy that someone else had decided to stop by and help.

About halfway to my house, I stopped and thought, for the first time: what in the world is somebody doing, walking the streets at 5Am on a day like today? So, I ran/waddled back to the corner, and took a look around.... and saw nothing. Not a person in sight as far as the eye could see. I even said outloud, "Where did you go?"

Was the young man who stopped by an angel? To the driver he should have been, but maybe he didn't notice. I like to think he was, even if he was only pretending. Maybe the driver was the one entertaining, and he got an angel and me for free. Or maybe the driver was the angel, and two souls, awakened early, got a reminder of the giving nature of Christmas. I don't know. I wish both explanations could be true.

I do know that they say good things happen in threes. I'm hoping that it doesn't take 10 more years for me to be convinced.

Hello from Terre

2004-05-22T09:13:00.000-05:00

Hello everyone. Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers being sent our way. Things are going well, and since Jim has hit most of the high points, I will only add a few thoughts.

We have both eaten pulpo, which is octopus in red vine. Don´t freak out mom. Jim liked it very much. My impression . . . it does NOT taste like chicken. The breads are fabulous, and French fries fried in olive oil accompany almost every meal.

We have seen some incredible countryside, we have seen beautiful birds that we have never seen before. Until a couple of days ago, there were storks (who have huge nests on rooftops) everywhere. The land we are in now, Galicia, looks like the shire in Lord of the Rings. It is truly breathtaking.

Everyone hug your washer and dryer daily and tell them how much you love them.

I love you all and miss you. We are well.
See you soon.
Terre

On the road, again...

2004-05-22T09:06:00.000-05:00

Just Waylon, Ramon and the boys.....

¡Hola! We are signing on from a cibercafe in Palas de Rei (population 2000: Salute!) We have walked in this morning from Ventas de Naron, where we stayed in a Refugio and ate next door at the Restaurant Labrador. (No, that was not on the menu). We were the 3rd and 4th in the queue and met a very nice couple (Manuel and Reme) from Barcelona and were joined by a fellow from the previous two days walk, Ramon. Manuel speaks excellent English and Reme/Ramon a little less so, so dinner was in Spanglish for our benefit.

The walk this morning was good, with rolling hills up and down small river valleys. Wonderful countryside covered in farms and stands of Eucalyptus, which they grow and harvest here. We passed a ´village´ of one house today.

We have stopped here for the day, found a nice hotel (25€ per day!), washed our clothes, eaten lunch, and walked around a bit. We have even bumped into old friends....

Tomorrow we hope to move on to Melide. From there we have mostly smaller towns until Santiago, so we will try to check in tomorrow and then perhaps Santiago. The 27th is our target for arriving into Santiago.

Soul-searching, foot washing, Sarria

2004-05-18T17:43:00.000-05:00

After dinner Terre and I assessed our foot situation and decided to book a train to Sarria. That´s considerably down the road, but still more than the 100 KM (62 miles) of walking required to obtain a certificate. Our train to Monte de Leon leaves in a couple of hours. We transfer there an hour later on a carriage to Sarria. We will arrive late, so we probably won´t get in the albergue/refugio there, but instead will book in a hostal or hotel. We worked out a rough 9 day walk from there to Santiago. After this message, I´ll be running some simulations to get 9 and 10 journey models.
[And yes, I am avoiding talking about how disappointed we both are, but we both agreed this is best.]
Aside from that, Astorga is very beatiful - small and compact, with lots of little alleys and side streets, squares for sitting around, and a fantastic cathedral.

Astorga

2004-05-17T14:00:00.000-05:00

Quick update from a cyber cafe in Astorga.
We spent two nights in Leon after travelling something like 1 & 1/2 days.
Then we walked to Villadangos de Paramo, 13.5 miles for our first day. Not bad, and the refugio was nicer than I imagined. We have met many people on the walk, including Tasmanians, Kiwis, etc. So far, we are the only Americans. Others have told us we are the only Americans they have seen since France.

Astorga

2004-05-17T02:10:00.000-05:00

Today we walked to Astorga, 16.8 miles. Absolute murder. We made it to Hospital de Orbigo early and decided to push on. Very tough - the road was more like a dirt trail with river stones embedded in it. Unpleasant doesn´t begin to describe it. At the end of the day we met two new folks who walked us to the Albergue (municipal quasi refugio). Not a bad room and the shower had hot water - who can complain? But today has taken its toil and, at the very least we are extending the walk to 14 days instead of 13 to reduce the future walking day distances. Or, we may have to bail on walking and play tourist instead.

The Pilgrims Depart

2004-05-15T16:45:00.001-05:00

We took the pilgrims to the airport on Thursday morning. It's been two days since we've heard from them, so we think a dragon ate them somewhere in the Spanish countryside. Maybe it was a vegetarian dragon who thought that they were an exotic kind of squash, and so his stomach will be pumped by a friendly village doctor. We can only hope....

Valladolid

2004-05-15T11:06:00.001-05:00

Loaded Packs

2004-05-12T20:32:00.002-05:00

Somehow I don't think this is what Terre had in mind when I said, "With all my earthly goods I thee endow." Just for reference, Terre's is the one on the left that guys would call 'purple' (that is, eggplant), while mine is just plain blue.

Mine came out at about 20 lbs, while Terre's is slightly lighter.

It's 8 o'clock (2 AM London, 3AM Spain). Tomorrow starts early.

Camino planner

2004-05-11T12:11:00.001-05:00

For those of you playing along at home, I've updated my Camino France Route Planner. I've used it to model the consequences of trying to walk a certain number of miles per day. [ Hey, different people handle stress in different ways. ]

EDITOR: currently offline.

At any rate, I wrote this little tool, which is now a primitive web app, to let me select starting locations (Leon, in our case), destinations (Santiago de Compostela), and what I facetiously refer to as 'maximum walking distances'. This toy then calculates a route, showing you the legs of the journey and attempting, if possible, to end each days' journey in less than the max. specified miles. Of course, not all towns have refugios, so my app is greedy.. it assumes you'll walk on til you hit a town with a place to stay. Which we will,, und ve vill like it.

193 miles into 13 days is 14.85 miles per day. Turns out, though, that you actually need to shoot for 15,3 miles in order to do the walk from Leon in 13 days. [Actually, I ran a set of models across a range of max distances to figure that out.
Like I said, stress, people, different. ]

Caveats apply. Not responsible for anything, don't trust my data, I have no idea what I'm doing, etc.

5 days

2004-05-10T08:35:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the 5 day mark til the trip. I laminated our strip maps and an overall map of the route. I don't think I'll take both - probably just the strip maps. I got them by printing off the route information from the wonderful Mundi Camino site.

Jordan is eight!

2004-05-01T09:12:00.001-05:00

Today is my niece is 8 years old! Well, sorta.... we celebrated it today, which is practically the same thing. Or maybe it just means that she can have two birthdays.
Unfortunately, it is raining, which means we won't be able to have nearly as much fun outdoors, but I'm sure we will still have a good time. We assemble at my sister's house this afternoon.

Less than two weeks

2004-05-01T09:10:00.000-05:00

A little less than two weeks to go now til our walk. This past week, Jonathan Bennett came by and interviewed Terre and I for a brief blurb in the GSL bulletin. He hopes to do a longer article for the diocesan newsletter and a followup article when we return.

Things you think everyone knows

2004-03-16T15:11:00.000-06:00

This morning I exchanged mail with Jon B., one of my old bosses, and at some point I explained I would be out of the country soon. There ought to be a name for the phenomena of thinking that a fact is well-known when it isn't. At this point, it seems like I've been talking about the camino for so long that I assume that most people know about it and know I'm going. And then I'm reminded that it's simply not true.

Liberty Lake

2004-03-15T19:45:00.001-06:00

Terre and I walked 8.5 miles around Liberty Lake this past weekend, with packs. I carried 30 lbs. I learned two lessons:

Know the distance around a course before you begin, and

30 lbs is heavy.

We thought we were walking around a 2.5 mile path. Imagine our surprise and disappointment when we learned that it was only 1.7 miles. Still, it went well. No major issues, though our feet were a little tender after finishing.